The Perseid meteor shower is one of the best-known showers, with a peak
of activity each year in mid-August. This year the maximum was expected
to occur on 12th August between 17:30 and 20:00 UT (WAST = UT + 8hrs)
with expected maximun rates of around 100 meteors per hour at the peak.
Each meteor shower is named after the constellation from which the
meteors all appear to originate, a position known as the radiant. The
radiant for the Perseid shower is in the northern hemisphere
constellation of Perseus (see image, left).

The parent body for the Perseid meteors is comet 109P Swift-Tuttle,
named after its discovery by astronomers Lewis Swift and Horace Tuttle
in 1862. The shower usually begins around July 17th and continues to be
active until late August with a peak usually around August 12th.
Perseid meteors are quite bright and fast, travelling at speeds of
around 60 km/s through the atmosphere. Studies of the distribution of
meteors in this shower show evidence for filamentary structure in the
trail of debris left by the comet.

This year, the maximum was best viewed from places in and around the
northern Pacific Ocean, including the extreme west of North America and
and the extreme eastern Japan and China. Unfortunately for us, it was
not visible directly from Australia, but there are telescopes in the
north which we can still use to observe these kinds of events. One of
these is a radio meteor detector situated at Jodrell Bank Observatory in
the UK.